Lesbian Conference Hears Two Drs. Challenge Idea that Homosexuality is a Disease
At a conference on this day sponsored by the Daughters of Bilitis, the first national Lesbian rights organization (founded September 21, 1955), Dr. Wesley Pomeroy, co-author of the two famous Kinsey reports on male sexual behavior and female sexual behavior, and another doctor challenged the idea that homosexuality was a disease.
About 100 people, male and female, attended the event at the Barbizon Plaza.
A planned panel discussion on the topic was scheduled to be on the local ABC affiliate’s Les Crane television show but was cancelled, with no reason given. It was probably due to the highly sensitive nature of the subject. In the 1950s and into the 1960s there were very few public discussions of homosexuality in the U.S. such as occurred on this day.
On December 15, 1973, the American Psychiatric Association issued a statement that homosexuality was not a disease.
Learn more at the Lesbian Herstory Archives
Read: Marcia Gallo, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement (2006)
And read: Vern Bullough, ed., Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context (2002)
Learn more: Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney, Out For Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (1999)
Learn more about homosexuality, “The Mental Illness That Went Away”: http://www.behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/2011/10/08/homosexuality-the-mental-illness-that-went-away/